by Bob Bidecant
Epilogue
E.1
The black lace slipped off the book easily, written inside on the first page was.
“Diary of Abraham Zlotin 1864”
It fell open to a page that had been marked with a small white flat ribbon, a musty smell emanated from the old pages. He ran his finger along each word as he read the entry, trying to understand the shaky handwriting. Words written at the same table his mother had been murdered on.
March 23. Unnamed village. Circassia 1864.
“Major Boris Petrovich and I spent the morning back at High Command. Major Boris had been summoned by the chief of staff for all troops in Circassia, Count Peter Evdokimoff, to explain the reports he had submitted regarding his troops behaviour.
We arrived late at the village and checked each cottage. When we entered the last cottage, we found two boys, Mikael and his twin brother Jaak. Their father had been shot and their mother raped and killed. Also inside were troopers, Nikolay Babichev, Trofim Ulyashin and the Squadron translator, Sergeant Alexi Gurin….”
E.2
‘Can you hear me? Hello wake up, can you speak English?’ The smelling salts burnt his nostrils Gurin coughed and looked around. He was lying in a bed in a hospital ward.
‘Where am I?’
‘You are in the London hospital, what happened? How did you get hurt?’ asked a young nurse. He raised his hand and felt a dressing on his neck. The nurse pushed his hand away.
‘Leave it alone or you will start it bleeding again.’
‘I got robbed. How did I get here?’ Gurin asked. The nurse pointed to three teenage boys who were standing nearby.
‘They carried you here from Whitechapel High Street. Most people stepped over you. They get many drunks sleeping on the streets at that time of night and nobody takes any notice of them anymore. You are lucky; they stopped to see if you were all right. They got you here just in time, before you bled to death, and all three of them gave blood for you.’ Gurin turned his head painfully and looked at the three boys sitting around his bed drinking tea and eating the biscuits the nurse had given them. They all had dried bloodstains on their clothes from carrying Gurin. One wore a skullcap.
‘You are Hebrews?’ He asked them in English. The three boys nodded and smiled. Gurin reached inside his pocket and held his hand out with four shillings in it. They looked at each other and one spoke.
‘We are not waiting for your money; we wanted to make sure you recovered.’ Gurin noticed the boy had no shoes.
‘Take it anyway, please.’ Gurin gestured with his hand again. They looked at each other and nodded. The tall man stepped forward and accepted the money.
‘Thank you.’ He said smiling.
‘No, thank you.’ He watched them turn and walk away. He called after them.
‘Sorry.’ They looked at him strangely.
‘He means the blood on our clothes,’ one said. ‘Don’t worry we can wash them.’ Gurin nodded, nobody would ever know what he had done to his own people. The nurse pushed his head back on the pillow. She smiled at him mischievously. He noticed her dark good looks.
‘How does it feel to have Jewish blood inside you now?’ she asked.
